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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

“Watching Purple Rain for the first time as a young queer kid was a transformative experience, to say the least. I was a nine-year old with gender dysphoria, in a Catholic Mexican household dominated by misogyny. Prince became the god I turned to. We would come home from Sunday school and watch that VHS over and over until it warped.”—Rachel McKibbens

Minneapolipstick

1.
Santa Ana, California,
3 a.m. in my cousin’s basement,
lights out, television volume spun low.
We are huddled around the screen,
a small congregation of forgotten children,
brown faces illuminated by
a five-foot-two Black man,
decked out in lace, eyeliner, Spandex
and the gutsiest high-heeled boots
big enough to fit only a mannequin.
This Minnesota royalty freaks and splits his body biblical.
Throat raw with screeching doves, he pirouettes
with his truest love: a pale pawn shop guitar
we daydream of buying some day
with our lunch money.
2.
1984. What planet is this?
A third-grade heartbreak apostle,
I got a butch haircut my father calls a “Dorothy Hamill.”
Naw, pops. Watch me pin the girls against the handball courts.
Bold. Answering their tongues with my tongue.
My forbidden schoolyard brides. My makeshift Apollonias.
Once they’re in love, I pull away, bite my lower lip,
wink, then walk away.
I am not yet a king, but I got moxie and I move
like I know I’ll die young.
3.
Boys will be boys, unless they aren't
4.
This is what it sounds like
to praise our heavenly bodies in spite of the hells
that singed us into current form. For the permission
you granted in sweat and swagger,
for the mascara’d tears you shed on-screen,
for the juicy curls that hung over your right eye
like dangerous fruit, for the studded
shoulder pad realness and how your
falsetto gospel rang our young,
queer souls awake,
we say amen.

Rachel McKibbens

Rachel McKibbens was born in Anaheim, California. She is the author of blud (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), Into the Dark & Emptying Field (Small Doggies Press, 2013) and Pink Elephant (Cypher Books, 2009). McKibbens is a two-time New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and the 2009 Women of the World Poetry Slam champion.

after the poet asked how I would bury my brother
Beyond the carrots and blind white worms, beyond
the yellowing bone orchards and corkscrew roots,
beyond the center of this churchless earth, beloved Peter,
my little sorcerer, brought up dirty & wrong, you deserve more

The Mad Girls climb the wet hill,breathe the sharp air through sick-green lungs.The Wildest One wanders off like an old cowand finds a steaming breast inside a footprint in the snow.She slips it into her glove, holds it close like a darling.